Paul says he will now prioritize stopping Trump?

derek4ever

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Rand Paul says he’s going to spend “every waking hour” trying to stop Donald Trump from getting the Republican nomination, saying Trump as the nominee would guarantee a Republican loss in the general election.

“Think if we, the Republican Party, becomes the party of angry people, that insinuate that most immigrants are drug dealers or rapists, that’s a terrible direction for our party,” the Kentucky senator and presidential candidate told the Alan Colmes Showon Thursday. “We are never going to grow as a party, we are never going to increase our vote among the Hispanic population, the black population, among women, all of those things we need to expand our party, Donald Trump takes us in the wrong direction.
“He would be a disaster,” he added. “We’ll be, we’ll be slaughtered, in a landslide. That’s why my every waking hour is to try to stop Donald Trump from being our nominee.”
Still, Paul said he would support Trump should he win the nomination.
“I’m a Republican, and I think if you don’t support the nominee, it harms even those like myself, because for example, I was not the establishment pick when I ran for the U.S. Senate, but I agreed that I would support them if they won,” he said. “But they also agreed to support me. So it works both ways. It sounds terrible, ‘who are you going to support? Donald Trump.’ But I expect Donald Trump to support me as well, if I win.”
Asked if he has more in common with Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson than Donald Trump, the Kentucky senator said yes and no.
“In some ways yes and in some ways no,” he said. “I don’t really know his platform, but I do know that the Republican Party has allowed a libertarian-leaning person like myself to actually become a U.S. Senator, and that I’ve worked very hard to make the party more libertarian and more constitutionally conservative. And I think it’s been for a good thing.”
Paul said the pundits who question if he is “libertarian enough” are speaking nonsense.
“You know, I think I always just tried to be who I am,” said Paul. “Everybody, every pundit out there tries to say ‘oh you’re not libertarian enough,” but if the problem were if I’m not libertarian enough, and that’s why the poll numbers are not higher, that would be an argument that oh, ‘libertarians are voting for Donald Trump,’ so it doesn’t really make any sense. But I have to be who I am. I’m a limited government constitutional conservative. I have some libertarian feelings ,and it’s harder if there’s a purity test for everything to determine what is purely right or wrong.”

hxxp://www.buzzfeed.com/andrewkaczynski/rand-paul-to-spend-his-every-waking-hour-trying-to-stop-trum?bftwnews&utm_term=.gepgxqO0We#.jm0NdLOjyP
 
His next move will be to take Iowa.

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I don't see anywhere in that where he used the words that he's prioritizing taking Trump down over anything else, especially winning.

Every interview he's had he says he's "in it to win it". Seems pretty clear.
 
Essentially Rand is going to try triangulating his campaign with both the mainline GOP and the so-called anti-establishment, which is what he was trying to do before Trump got involved and turned the whole thing into a circus. The difference now is that since Rand was given an opportunity to tell Fox Business and the RNC to shove it for their treatment of him and has earned himself some street cred with people who want so-called "outsiders", he now has to take out the competition in that department, namely the Clinton plant from the big apple.

People can bitch all they want about attacking Trump being a bad move, if Rand is going to get the nomination then Trump has to go down, end of story. If Rand can upset Trump and Cruz in Iowa and win, he'll be in a prime position to make things tough for Trump in New Hampshire and beyond, thus deflating Trump's "inevitability" claim, which is the sole reason why he is polling so high. Trump has no real support outside of his media phenomenon and celebrity, and once he loses a few contests, these poll numbers will start to evaporate.
 
Can somebody answer what's going on with Rand here?? What will his next moves be?? :confused:

Not much to explain, in 2012, everyone was trying to be the Anti-Romney. Now Trump is the Romney and we need an Anti-Trump.

Seems pretty simple judging from Rand's recent extra aggression on Trump and also added new talking points too.
 
“We’ll be, we’ll be slaughtered, in a landslide. That’s why my every waking hour is to try to stop Donald Trump from being our nominee.”
Still, Paul said he would support Trump should he win the nomination.

He'd prefer Cruz or Rubio? How's that going to be better?
 
He'd prefer Cruz or Rubio? How's that going to be better?

I don't think he said that either.

He was asked a question about Trump, and answered it. He wasn't ranking the other candidates in order of preference.

It's a buzzfeed article trying to make something out of nothing.
 
Can somebody answer what's going on with Rand here?? What will his next moves be?? :confused:

He's managing expectations. Rand is a smart and realistic person. I'm sure he knows he is not going to win. He's letting the hardcore followers down easy by shifting to destroy Trump and educational campaign #3.
 
Yep, he thinks we should have been dominating the situation so Putin wouldn't have been tempted to come in.

:rolleyes: That's not the same as saying he supports a no fly zone in Syria and you know it. He said he thinks Syria would be better off keeping Assad in power just like Iraq and Libya would be better off keeping Saddam and Qaddafi in power. That's the opposite of supporting a no fly zone. Assad has jets that could have made short work of ISIS but for the U.S. meddling in that war.
 
He's managing expectations. Rand is a smart and realistic person. I'm sure he knows he is not going to win. He's letting the hardcore followers down easy by shifting to destroy Trump and educational campaign #3.

Wrong. Not a single vote has been cast. It's anybody's election. But in order to have a chance the front runner, Trump, cannot be seen as the inevitable victor. We need Trump to lose Iowa. A Ted Cruz victory is better for us than a Trump victory. A Ben Carson victory would have been better but that's clearly not going to happen now. Ultimately, of course, a Rand Paul victory would be the best. I expect Rand to at least come in 4th behind Cruz, Trump and Rubio. But he could beat out Rubio. That would be epic. If he came in second in Iowa that would be lights out for the establishment.
 
Essentially Rand is going to try triangulating his campaign with both the mainline GOP and the so-called anti-establishment, which is what he was trying to do before Trump got involved and turned the whole thing into a circus. The difference now is that since Rand was given an opportunity to tell Fox Business and the RNC to shove it for their treatment of him and has earned himself some street cred with people who want so-called "outsiders", he now has to take out the competition in that department, namely the Clinton plant from the big apple.

People can bitch all they want about attacking Trump being a bad move, if Rand is going to get the nomination then Trump has to go down, end of story. If Rand can upset Trump and Cruz in Iowa and win, he'll be in a prime position to make things tough for Trump in New Hampshire and beyond, thus deflating Trump's "inevitability" claim, which is the sole reason why he is polling so high. Trump has no real support outside of his media phenomenon and celebrity, and once he loses a few contests, these poll numbers will start to evaporate.

Yes, Rand now has some anti-establishment street cred, because he was forced to actually walk the walk of acting like one by confronting the MSM once he was excluded from the debate. But now he is walking straight back to an establishment stance, with his stop-Trump bashing. You can drone on all you want about attacking Trump being a good move, but if Rand is going to get that guy's VOTES then he has to go down the path of embracing the anti-establishment candidates, end of story. The anti-establishment vote is real, and independent of Trump, and will only transfer to another non-establishment candidate, but not to one who retreats back to an establishment posture.

Attacking is NOT triangulating. Cruz, the one contender who has been able to compete with Trump, did so based on triangulating him instead of openly attacking him (note that now that Cruz did take a shot at Trump, watch for the hit he is going to take in the polls). Bash the lead anti-establishment candidate, and you bash their supporters, which turns them off from thinking you are anti establishment. If Rand has not learned that by now, it doesn't bode well.
 
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Wrong. Not a single vote has been cast. It's anybody's election. But in order to have a chance the front runner, Trump, cannot be seen as the inevitable victor. We need Trump to lose Iowa. A Ted Cruz victory is better for us than a Trump victory. A Ben Carson victory would have been better but that's clearly not going to happen now. Ultimately, of course, a Rand Paul victory would be the best. I expect Rand to at least come in 4th behind Cruz, Trump and Rubio. But he could beat out Rubio. That would be epic. If he came in second in Iowa that would be lights out for the establishment.

That just isn't going to happen. Cruz is second in IA with a 20 point lead over Rand. Polls can be wrong sure, but not that wrong.
 
That just isn't going to happen. Cruz is second in IA with a 20 point lead over Rand. Polls can be wrong sure, but not that wrong.
The polls can be wrong but that doesn't matter if people believe the polls and want to vote for a winner, they become self fulfilling prophecies.
 
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The polls can be wrong but that doesn't matter if people believe the polls and want to vote for a winner, they become self fulfilling prophecies.
This is true.

I've seen quite a lot of comments online like : "Rand can't win so I am getting on the Trump/Cruz train."

Annoying.
 
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